what if?

“What if I’m a loving God?”

The question gripped my heart as I drove through the night. A recent devastation and another upcoming disappointment on the horizon were presently tangling my heart into a huge mess.

Through the darkness, tears, and prayers, God’s voice came to my heart: “What if I’m a loving God?”

I was immediately convicted. What if my circumstances currently crushing me weren’t reasons to question or distrust God, but to pull me into greater trust in my Heavenly Father? To trust His plan in how things were working out in my life even when that meant that my plans had to completely fall apart.

That question was all it took for a spark of hope to ignite in my soul.

I always believed that God was loving. I knew that in my head and my heart. And yet when my version of how life should be wasn’t unfolding, it shook me. Life seemed more like a nightmare than a bad dream. It didn’t just feel like my plans failed but that my life was shattered.

But what if all of this was precisely because God loved me? Loved me enough to not let me get my way, to get second-best, to settle for my meager plans over His majestic ones.

What if God was showing His greatest love to me by not letting me have what I thought I wanted? What if I needed this breaking? What if His mercy was wrapped up in my disappointments and devastations? What if He’s a loving God?

I know that God is loving so I know that this is true: God’s plans for me, although mysterious and challenging to discern at times, are always wrapped in love. So when His plan is different than mine, instead of questioning Him, I can trust that He sees something greater than I can, He knows more than I know, His purposes are greater than mine.

I recently heard the testimony of a woman whose plans fell apart so that God’s plans could fall into place. For almost ten years, she and her husband had battled infertility and suffered several devastating miscarriages. Through it all, they held onto their faith in the Lord, trusting in His plan in their deepest pain. Eventually, God opened both of their hearts to adoption. Because of friends they had living in Ukraine, they decided to pursue an international adoption of two brothers from that country. Their adoption was finalized almost a year to the day before the invasion of Ukraine started. All that woman had wanted was to be a mom. That was her plan. It was a beautiful plan. Yet God’s plan was to rescue two orphan brothers from an upcoming war. His plan was infinitely greater. His plan was best.

I don’t have all the answers for the pain and suffering in this world. I won’t try to tell you why that bad thing was allowed to happen to you. But I do know this: It’s never the end of our stories. God’s not done. He’s still writing. Let’s trust Him with the pages that seem blank and unknown to us, a future that's not ours to see yet. There is One in Heaven who sees it all and He’s writing a story - for our good, His glory, and the saving of others’ lives.

Heavenly Father, Thank You for being my Loving God. Even in the twists and turns of my story, I know that it’s all covered in Your love and mercy. I trust You to write the best story. Give me faith like a child and joyful expectation in You alone. Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done. May my story bring You glory in every way. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

life's interruptions = divine interventions

I have a question I want to ask you: What would your life look like if you radically obeyed God?

When you felt Him speak something to your heart and you didn’t just hear it, but you did it right away?

When He tells you to forgive someone…

When He tells you to give something to someone…

When He tells you to do something that you don’t want to do…

When He tells you to trust Him with that circumstance that you’ve been struggling to trust Him with…

When He tells you to ___________________ {insert His voice to you in this season}

What would your life look like if you radically obeyed God?

Put aside your will and your wants.

Consider the fact that the God of the universe is talking to you.

Maybe it’s hard to hear.

Maybe it’s not what you want to hear.

But God is telling you something.

God is speaking to you.

You have a choice.

You will be blessed if you follow Him.

It will take faith to forgive, love, trust.

But how amazing it is that God is trying to get your attention.

He’s interrupting you so that you can stop chasing your will and you can start living out His.

Which is good, pleasing, and perfect.

His will is best.

He’s been trying to get your attention.

But He won’t take your power to choose away.

He desires and longs for you to choose His plans, to see the beauty in taking His hand in faith and following where He leads.

There’s a reason why.

His plans > your plans.

Don’t miss it.

my Jesus year

People call a person’s 33rd year of life their “Jesus year.” I first heard of this I think when I was just turning 33 last October. I never knew that some people associated their thirty-third year with Jesus before. It’s not hard to see why, though. Jesus is believed by historians and Bible scholars to have been around the age of 33 when He was crucified and resurrected here on this earth.

Of course, some will use this phrasing perhaps in a sacrilegious manner. But that’s not my intention obviously. I know other Eastern religions also believe this year to be one of distinctive transformation and personal growth.

I used the term “Jesus year” with all the sacredness possible in reflecting in awe that one is the same age of Christ during such monumental, world-changing, history-shifting events.

I cannot attest that everyone will experience profound growth in self over the course of being 33. However, I certainly did. I wouldn’t have ever asked for or imagined what 33 would hold for me. But I forever changed by what happened this past year.

As I approach my 34th birthday soon, I am in awe of what Christ has seen me through these past 365 days. It’s been surreal to be the same age as Jesus during such a pivotal year for me - one of truly feeling like I needed a resurrection. A year of feeling the death to self, the death to my will, the death to my self-reliance and self-sufficiency. The death to my past self and a resurrection into the woman Christ calls me to be. And a rebirth, if you will, into who God wants me to be and more focused on what He’s created me to do.

Long story short, my idols failed me this year. ALL of them. Those things I was placing on the throne of my heart instead of Jesus - they disappointed me. They lied to me. They weren’t every sources of salvation for me. And when they failed me because I had them in a place they NEVER should be, my world absolutely and utterly shattered, with the twists and turns of a Hollywood movie script. Almost unbelievable to believe. Yet really true and really happening to me.

Thankfully, the end of my idols was not the end of my Savior. And because I am His, their end was not my end - even if it felt like it at the time.

In her book, La La Lovely: The art of finding beauty in the everyday, author Trina McNeilly writes that, “What feels like the end is often the beginning” (p. 38). She goes on to quote a poet: “For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it will your heart survive” (p. 39).

My heart endured such a winter this year.

And Christ got me to the other side. Along with His people, the church and my amazing friends and family.

I have more questions than answers. But I do have answers. I know why the winter came. I know how it came. And I know that it wasn’t meaningless: God’s entrusted this story to me for a reason. I didn’t just live through all of this for nothing.

Yet I still don’t understand everything about it all. I’m done begging God for answers. I’m learning to give Him time to redeem the stories of my 33rd year, time for the snow to thaw and spring to arrive. It always does.

I’ll end with a quote that was a lifeline to me during this past year, one that will forever stay with me because of the hope it inspired in my heart, soul, and spirit during the coldest part of my winter season:

“…nothing that ever comes against [us] ever has the power to disrupt the perfect plans of God, and…nothing that befalls [us] is either surprising to Him or beyond what He has created [us] to be able to bear… [It’s not that ‘God is doing this to you,’ but rather, ‘His plans for you will not be and cannot be in any way disrupted by this. Trust that He faithfully created you with everything you need to face this - because He has always known it would come’ .”

-Stephanie Tait, The View From Rock Bottom (p. 41).

It’s that last line for me. I certainly didn't know that all that came would come. But I take comfort in the fact that God did.

He saw me going through the winter.

He saw when the bottom would fall out.

When the rug would get pulled out from under me with one fell swoop.

When my world would crumble completely.

When my soul would be crushed beyond recognition.

When my fragile heart would break into what felt like a billion pieces, irreparable and forever broken.

But He also saw me reaching the other side.

He also saw me rising from the ashes.

He also saw me healing from wounds from years and years ago, finally.

He also saw me getting stronger in Christ and sharing my story to help others in their pain.

He saw that all, too.

He let my 33rd year happen because He sees what I cannot. The devil lied when he said it was the end. God never leaves His people in a winter season forever. Our stories don’t end in heartbreak. They don’t end without redemption. If that’s you - if you feel like your winter will never end, can I reach back with the blizzard still fresh in my mind, and tell you, implore you to hold on because He’s not done. He’s still writing your story and there’s no way He’s going to leave such an amazing character like you stranded out in the cold.

No, no, my friend.

He’s too good.

Spring always comes.

Hope always returns.

Jesus always saves.

You’re so loved by Jesus,

Colleen